Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Our Science Marches on Department has brought this earth-shattering research to my attention.

In today's edition of ScienceDaily.com a study was published which found that...

(drumroll please)

PEOPLE WHO DRINK COFFEE (or use caffeine in general) BEFORE THEY TRY TO SLEEP HAVE TROUBLE SLEEPING!!!

This is not a joke. They kept a bunch of people up all night. 3 hours before they were allowed to sleep half of them took a 200mg caffeine pill (equivalent to 2 cups of coffee or 5 Diet Cokes) and the other half didn't get caffeine.

They found (sarcastic astonishment) that the patients who got the caffeine had more trouble sleeping than the ones who didn't! No shit!

33 comments:

intellileg
said...

Our department respectfully refers to these as the 'No Shit Sherlock' studies. Amazing how many of them there are -- probably the product of unfortunate PhD students told to (dis)prove their supervisor's pet peeves.

Not me. I can down a bottle of diet coke and go to bed an hour later, makes no difference to me. I wish it did because it also doesn't really make much of a difference when I am sleepy at work or in class.

Maybe someone was just 'practicin' how to do research, and thankfully arrived at this conclusion--it might have been sadder if the null hypothesis had turned out the other way, or something else went wrong and they 'proved' that drinking caffeinated beverage before bedtime was beneficial for sleep AND relieving heartburn.

A few months back there was one that said that children that got more exercise slept better too... must be the same researchers. Next their gonna do one that studies if new mothers get less sleep than others without children...

But there are some of us that caddeine does the opposite to. I learned the hard way trying to stay awake driving cross country that 2 NO DOZ and a jolt cola put me to sleep. My daughter is the same way. - Just call me the odd duck lol

Awesome! Now I know how to get funding for a study: I just propose to prove an already proven hypothesis! Instant $, since there's no way to "fail" the sponsor...especially if the funding comes from a state whose governor owns a company that produces caffeinated beverages.... Not that such things ever happen in actual science of course. I'm just hypothesizing....

"It is widely assumed and reported anecdotally that hitting ones penis with a hammer is very painful, however, this has never been proven clinically.

To test this hypothesis we took one hundred adult male volunteers and randomized them into two groups. The first group was hit with a real hammer and the second group was hit with a placebo styrofoam hammer.

The group hit with a real hammer reported significantly more penile pain than the control group."

I drink coke all the time. coffee and occ. juice. I work nights drink coke all night long. drink it before I go to bed, have it next to me while I sleep. No trouble sleeping. I am in my 50's, have been doing this since my teens. Your body gets used to it. No trouble sleeping. No trouble sleeping.

I was about say what intellileg said about "no shit sherlock". One of my consultants (attendings) was telling me today about someone who did a phD to answer the question about why men are interested in sex. To be published in the Disneyland Journal of Medicine.

Welcome to my whining!

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